U.S. Pat. No. 5,531,612 discloses a stacked modular jack comprising a plurality of receptacle connectors which are arranged in stacked relationship in a common housing. Each of the receptacle connectors comprises a cavity in the housing and terminals in the cavity which are arranged for engagement with terminals of a mating plug connector. The terminals in each cavity are pre-formed as part of a terminal insert which is installed in the cavity as a unit. Each terminal insert comprises an array of terminals having portions which are overmolded by a dielectric material that holds the terminals in fixed relative positions. A terminal insert is installed in each of the cavities of the stacked modular jack. Manufacture of these terminal inserts requires a number of operations, thereby adding to manufacturing cost, and handling these inserts further increases the cost and complexity of the stacked modular jack.
Alternatively, it is known to stitch terminals into a connector housing without the aid of an overmolded insert. In this technique, the housing is formed with multiple apertures each of which receives a respective terminal. These apertures must be configured complementary to the configurations of the terminals which are held therein. If it becomes necessary to change the configuration of the terminals, a problem occurs in that the configuration of the apertures must also be changed, thereby requiring a change to mold tooling for the housing. Further, although the stitching technique avoids the expense of overmolding the terminal array, it is more difficult to handle and manipulate a plurality of individual terminals which are not overmolded.
There is a need for an electrical receptacle connector which facilitates the insertion of terminals into the connector, which lends itself to changes in the configuration of the terminals, which minimizes the number of independent parts that must be handled during manufacture, and which is relatively inexpensive to produce.